Landings, Night Landings, and Fun at 700 AGL

I had a flight lesson scheduled Monday night, August 14th. I woke up that morning more than a little ill and stayed home from work for sleep and recovery. By late afternoon, I was feeling better and by early evening I made the determination that I was good enough to fly. I wasn’t 100%, but I was sure I could handle the airplane. Still, if I hadn’t been going up with another pilot I would have cancelled my time on the “better safe than sorry” principle.

I had originally scheduled the flight lesson to get some experience on grass and turf runways. Alex wasn’t available, so I flew with Pete. However, Pete pointed out that taking the wheel pants off changes the weight and balance, and thus can only be done by an airplane mechanic and requires that the plane’s books be updated appropriately. Pete offered that we could practice grass fields in the Archer, but I declined—I wanted some practice with normal landings and emergency procedures anyway.

During my last trip, while in the pattern at Watertown Airport, I had to extend my downwind to accommodate traffic on final. Since I couldn’t fly base and final “by the numbers”, I had to use my judgement on altitude, power, and flap settings. I didn’t judge very well, there wasn’t a VASI on the runway I was using, and I made the approach very low. I was uncomfortably close to the tree tops off the end of the field. I had lost my ability to judge approaches.

We flew 9DS to Joliet (JOT), said “hi” to the numerous deer who gathered to watch me, and I shot a lot of landings. I didn’t count, but credited myself with 8 for the entire trip as that number was on the low end of my guesses.

I bounced every landing. Every one. Because I wasn’t cheating. I was working on getting my technique better, so I was fully cutting the power at the appropriate time and working on my flair to arrest the descent so as not to bounce. I was never quite aggressive enough on the flair. Back in the “real world” when I’m flying, I leave a trickle of power in until touch down, so I’m gentler on my flair than—apparently—I should be.

My last couple of take-off and landings at JOT were well after sunset and it was dark. Good night practice. I’m happy to report that my night landings were identical to my day landings (yes, that does mean that I bounced them), so I’m consistent and not succumbing to night illusions.

Finally, we departed JOT. At 700 AGL on upwind, Pete pulled the power and I looked straight ahead at a large patch of black ground in front of me. I tried to remember what was there, but did a quick calculation that it didn’t matter—I should turn back to the runway. Just as I reached that conclusion, Pete said “let’s see if we can make the runway”. I pitched down for best glide and made a steep left turn. I lined up with the runway and, seeing that I was high (!), threw in full flaps. I think I would have landed on the final 1/3 of the runway and overrun the end. Pete said he would have liked to see me put in a slip, perform s-turns, or just waddle my wings to get down faster. Me too, but I’m comfortable with slips and—while I was high for making the runway—I was too low to feel comfortable putting in a slip. And slips don’t help much on the DA40 anyway. Feh. I need to practice this more, maybe in a simulator. So now I know: about 650 AGL is the magic number for me to get the DA40 back to the runway if my engine dies after T/O.

So, I put in power, retracted flaps to T/O, returned to the night sky, and turned home to MDW.